Gaming laptops come in all shapes and sizes these days. Not only are they powerful, but they can also be stylish to suit the needs of serious gamers. However, if you’re like me and mainly use a laptop for daily productivity, you might not want a gaming system that’s too visually striking, but you do want the raw power to play games like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

All of that is exactly why we recommend the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro. It doesn't have many of the gaming aesthetic trademarks that we're used to, but it's certainly powerful. Plus, there are peripherals that help it run efficiently when gaming. With RTX 3070 Ti GPU, AMD Ryzen 7 6800H CPU, and 32GB of RAM, this is a great Lenovo laptop for all kinds of gamers, and one of the most powerful AMD and Nvidia-powered gaming laptops I’ve used in a while.

However, there are a couple of things that keep it from being perfect, like the occasional system bug, the poor-sounding speakers, and a very bad 720p webcam that lacks Windows Hello facial recognition.

About this review: Lenovo sent us the 16ARG7H model for review. The company did not see the contents of this review before publishing.

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is a powerful gaming laptop with the latest hardware from AMD and NVIDIA, plus a tall 16-inch display.

Key Features
  • AMD Ryzen 9 6800H CPU
  • NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU
  • 165 Hz Display
Specifications
  • Operating System: Windows 11 Home
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX (8 cores, 16 threads)
  • GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4070 Laptop GPU
  • Storage: 1TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, two M.2 slots, upgradeable
  • Battery: 80Wh
  • Display (Size, Resolution): 16 inches, 2560x1600 (QHD+), 16:10 aspect ratio, IPS, 300 nits, AG, 100% sRGB, 165Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision, AMD FreeSync, NVIDIA G-SYNC
  • Camera: 1080p, eShutter
  • Speakers: Dual 2W stereo, Nahimic Audio
  • Memory: 16GB DDR5-5200MHz, dual SODIMM slots, upgradeable
  • Ports: Four USB-A 3.2 (Gen 1), two USB-C 3.2 (Gen 2), HDMI, Ethernet, 3.5mm audio
  • Network: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.1
  • Dimensions: 14.31 x 10.25 x 0.88-1.05 inches (363.4mm x 260.35mm x 22.45-26.75mm)
  • Weight: Less than 5.5 pounds (2.5kg)
  • Brand: Lenovo
  • Model: 16ARX8
Pros
  • Can play any game without issue
  • Display is colorful and responsive
  • RGB keyboard is comfy and great for gaming and typing
Cons
  • 720p webcam without Windows Hello
Buy This Product
Lenovo Legion Pro 5 (2023)

Legion 5 Pro pricing and availability

  • You can buy the Legion 5 Pro in five different configurations on Lenovo’s website.
  • You also can buy the Legion 5 Pro at other retailers like Walmart.

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro can be purchased today at Lenovo.com. The pricing starts at $1,799, though it’s often on sale for less — we found it starting at $1,439. All configurations on Lenovo come with the AMD Ryzen 7 6800H CPU, but RAM, storage, and GPU can vary. There are also options for the RTX 3060 and RTX 3070 graphics card. The (16ARG7H) model that was sent to me for review doesn’t appear to be listed on Lenovo’s website yet. It has 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, which isn’t yet a combination option.

Design: It’s plain and simple, but under the hood, changes matter

  • The Legion 5 Pro isn’t overly sophisticated when it comes to design
  • The physical design hasn’t changed between generations
  • Under the hood changes like the larger intake and quad exhaust vents matter most
  • The speakers aren’t the best

This Lenovo Legion 5 Pro doesn’t look overly fancy when you compare it to other 16-inch or 17-inch gaming laptops like the flashier Alienware m17 R5. It's more similar to something like an HP OMEN 16 or the ThinkBook 16p Gen 3 that I just reviewed since it shares the same base look.

There are no fancy markings on the keyboard deck or even colorful accents on the sides of the laptop. The only thing that’d signal this is a gaming laptop is the printed Legion branding on the Storm Grey-colored aluminum lid. Oh, there's also the hump at the back that houses the extra ports. There’s no RGB lighting on the logo on the lid or the sides. There’s even a webcam kill switch on the side of the chassis, which you’d usually find on productivity laptops or a 2-in-1 like the MSI Summit E14 Flip Evo (Lenovo says it put this switch there since the thin bezels on the display has less room for hardware).

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However, like many gaming laptops the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is heavy. I really noticed that when I moved the unit to my living room to take photos for this review. While it isn’t a thick laptop, it is beefy, which is expected since there are powerful components inside. It weighs in at 5.49 pounds and about 0.78 inches thick. Gamers who want a slimmer laptop might want to check out the Legion Slim 7 instead.

All of that is just scratching the surface. There are a few things that Lenovo did with the Legion 5 Pro this year that benefit the performance. The fan, exhaust area, and heat pipe are all updated. In particular, the rear exhaust fans are larger, there’s an improved heat pipe layout, and the fan blades are 40% thinner. There’s also the Legion AI Engine software, which can optimize games and help boost frame rates.

"It's the under-the-hood changes that matter most with the Legion 5 Pro."

You might not be able to see it, but the Legion 5 Pro now has a larger intake and quad exhaust vents to boost cooling. Lenovo has four exhaust fans on this system, and there are small angular cuts on the display lid to help keep it cool. I really felt the heat and air coming from these fans while I was gaming. The fans can pull cool air into the system and push hot air out, too. It helps keep the keyboard deck, as well as the trackpad area, very cool to the touch.

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However, we wish Lenovo improved the side-firing peakers. Nahimic 3D Audio software can help improve your audio with easy surround sound, soundtracking, and various other audio modes, but it didn’t do much for me. I found myself using headphones with the Legion a lot. I’d rather see speakers above the keyboard like on the ThinkBook 16p, especially since there’s room for it there.

Display: Bright and 16:10 with tunes by X-Rite

  • The display gets bright at 500 nits
  • It also has a 16:10 aspect ratio display, which is great for productivity
  • It’s colorful, and you can tune it with the included X-Rite software
  • Atop the display is a terrible 720p webcam

The display on a gaming laptop is arguably the most important part of the setup. It must be bright, colorful, and spacious for productivity as well as gaming. The good news here is that the Legion 5 Pro’s 2560 x 1600 resolution display checks all those boxes. There’s even the bonus of it being a 165Hz panel.

As I say in most of my laptop reviews these days, the 16:10 aspect ratio on the Legion 5 Pro is perfect since I can stack my web browsing sessions side by side and get a full view of the web. There’s plenty of room for when I wanted to use this laptop just for productivity. Heck, I even stacked an instance of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 next to Microsoft Word when typing up this article, and I still felt immersed enough in both work and play.

Legion-5-Pro-Gaming-Laptop-13-2

The display really shines though when it comes to gaming and multimedia. Plugged into power, the display gets 500 nits of brightness, and whatever I was working on or playing felt alive and responsive. I watched replays of some of my favorite TV shows like Chicago PD or Blue Bloods, and it’s great to see how a display with high brightness can bring scenes in these shows to life. Outside of that, when gaming in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, I could see just about every single detail in the cockpit, and the high refresh rate meant I felt like I was flying a Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner. All the switches and dials were clear and easy to read, and the fast refresh rate meant sudden motions like turbulence from flying into a rainstorm over the NYC Tri-state area felt quite real.

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That’s just my experience, but I’ll let the colorimeter I used in my tests to show for it. This display is tuned by X-Rite, which gives it various profiles for Rec. 709, sRGB, default, and not calibrated, and I used the laptop without touching these settings. I selected the blank settings option, and was able to hit 70% of Adobe RGB, 65% NTSC, 71% P3, and 92% of sRGB. That’s about average in most areas — we look for 70% on the NTSC and Adobe RGB, and above 90% when it comes to sRGB.

"The display is bright, colorful, and spacious for productivity as well as gaming."

On an important side note, I hate the webcam that’s above the display panel. It’s only 720p and doesn't have Windows Hello IR support. The image outputted from the webcam looked washed out compared to my colleagues when I joined the weekly XDA Computing meeting. It’s a shame since if you're a gamer planning to stream your action from this laptop, you’ll need an external webcam.

Keyboard: Comfy, RGB, and with four-zone backlighting

  • The Legion TrueStrike Gaming Keyboard has great feedback
  • The trackpad under the keyboard is quite spacious
  • I love the RGB lighting, even though it isn’t on a per-key basis.

You can’t talk about a gaming laptop without mentioning RGB keyboards, can you? Well, the good news is that this Legion 5 Pro has a high-quality RGB keyboard. From the concave curved keys and the key travel, to the way the keycaps retract into the chassis, it's nearly perfect.

Bing's typing test validated my experiences, with the keyboard helping me push past the 80+ words per minute. Beyond that, the 1.5mm key travel helped me avoid tons of typos when typing up long documents, which is something I don’t usually expect from gaming laptop keyboards. And in gaming, the soft-landing switches that Lenovo uses helped make jamming the W,A, S, and D keys feel accurate, with less harsh feedback for sudden movements like backing away to avoid gunmen in CS:GO. Lenovo even thought to coat the keys with an anti-abrasion finish to reduce the chance the keycap text will wear down.

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However, more serious gamers might miss out on the per RGB lighting with this keyboard. The RGB lighting is instead four-zone based. You can tweak it with the Lenovo Vantage app (I kept mine on the rainbow spectrum). The lighting is bright and reflected on my fingers evenly when gaming in the dark.

As for the trackpad under the keyboard, Lenovo says it is bigger than the last generation. The surface feels nice and smooth, but the positioning still bothers me, just like on the ThinkBook. I tend to move my hands to avoid touching it when typing. It's still pretty decent for gaming though, since it isn’t too loud and the clickable surface is accurate. I think many players will end up using a dedicated mouse anyway.

Ports: Everything you need

  • There are a ton of ports on the Legion 5 Pro to help you avoid dongles.
  • There are two USB Type-C ports, one USB Type-A port, and an audio combo jack on the front
  • On the back there are even more, including HDMI and an Ethernet port

As a gaming laptop, I do love the port selection. The left side has two USB Type-C 3.2 ports. The right side has a USB Type-A port, and an audio combo jack. The rear is also where an extra set of ports are at. There’s an AC Power slot, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, HDMI, USB-C, and an Ethernet RJ45 port. I do like how the rear ports are labeled from the top because it makes it easy to find which port is which at a quick glance. The ports aren’t lit like they are on the ThinkBook, though.

Performance: The AMD Ryzen 6000 Series wins again but there are some weird bugs

  • The AMD Ryzen 6000 Series CPU+ the Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti graphics are a great combo for gaming
  • There’s a lot of ways to tweak performance thanks to the Lenovo Vantage software
  • Lenovo’s AI Engine boost can FPS slightly in some games
  • I experienced three bugs on Windows

There’s one word to describe the performance on the Legion 5 Pro: stunning. This laptop packs a lot of power, even though this AMD Ryzen CPU inside isn’t even the top mobile chip in AMD’s lineup (it’s the fifth best). Just a reminder, the Legion 5 Pro has the AMD Ryzen 9 6800H CPU. which has eight cores, 16 threads, a base clock of 3.2GHZ, and 45W TDP. That's paired with Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti graphics and 32GB of RAM. I think the 32GB RAM is what factors into making these games run so smoothly.

Any game from my usual test library ran amazingly on the Legion 5 Pro with high settings, as well as the native resolution. I’m talking about super playable 30-60 FPS+ on these high settings and 90 FPS+ on lower settings with 1440p or 1080p resolution. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, Cyberpunk 2077, and CS: Go all ran smoothly for more than two hours of gameplay. Older games like GTA V ran even smoother, and at console-level performance on the highest possible settings. In playing all these games, the system didn’t sound too loud on lower graphics settings, but I did hear the fans kick in when the graphics settings were all the way up.

Legion-5-Pro-Gaming-Laptop-10-2

The laptop is even more powerful for productivity. It handled my usual workflow of multitasking in Microsoft Edge without issue, and outputted edited photos and applied filters like Gaussian Blur in Photoshop in just seconds. You can see how powerful this laptop is when you account for the 3DMark: Time Spy Scoring, where it tops 11,000. For productivity and creativity, the CrossMark score is also above the 1,000 zone that’s considered good. And for that CPU power, the Cinebench score puts it against a gaming laptop with the Core i9 CPU, though this isn't that quite powerful in the final scoring.

Test Run

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (Ryzen 7 6800H+ GeForxe RTX 3070 Ti 8GB)

HP Envy 16 (Intel Core i7-12700H, RTX 3060)

ThinkBook 16p Gen 3 (AMD Ryzen 9 6900 HX+ Nvidia RTX 3060 6GB)

Acer Predator Triton Core i9-12900H, RTX 3080 Ti

PC Mark 10

6,856

6,829

6,336

6,955

3DMark: Time Spy

11,194

6,729

7,078

11,192

3DMark: Time Spy Extreme

5,487

3,311

3,418

5,270

VR Mark (Orange/Cyan/Blue)

Will not run

9,331/2,750/2,097

8,610/6,515/1,989

12,758 / 9,361 / 3,207

Geekbench 5 (Single/Multi)

1,579/10,278

1,712/10,848

1,554/9,206

1,881 / 12,938

Cinebench R23 (Single/Multi)

1,546/14,167

1,814/12,149

1,556/13,064

1,815 / 12,886

CrossMark (overall / productivity / creativity / responsiveness)

1,552/1,507/1,682

1,731/1,608/1,981/1,444

1,494/1,465/1,635

2,001 / 1,854 / 2,196 / 1,901

I ran all the benchmark tests as Lenovo suggested with the performance mode turned on. I did this by using the Fn+Q shortcut, but I also could have done it via Lenovo Vantage. This requires turning off hybrid mode and setting Windows to Best Performance. Like many gaming laptops, the Legion 5 Pro has different performance modes: Quiet, Balanced, and Performance. Quiet mode lowers the CPU voltage for better battery life, Balanced will choose the right mode automatically, and Performance kicks the CPU power and fans all the way up.

"This is a laptop that packs a lot of power, even though this AMD Ryzen CPU inside isn’t even the top mobile chip in AMD’s lineup."

This level of customization is great because pro gamers can get the most out of the laptop, along with those like me who just want long battery life. Lenovo also has the AI Engine Boost that can boost the FPS slightly in some games like CS:Go, Red Dead Redemption II, and even GTA V. I played two of those titles, and I really believe that’s the reason why I got the best possible FPS experience.

Unfortunately, I ran into three issues. The display on the Legion 5 Pro bugged out for me once while plugged into an external display, and turned off on its own. I tried to repeat the problem, but it didn’t happen a second time. I also had a problem where the system froze up right after a gaming session when I tried to launch Microsoft Edge, but a reboot fixed that. Finally, I was unable to run some of my tests. The VR Mark benchmark didn’t run, no matter what I tried, and when I tried to run PCMark 10 on battery, the system refused to launch it, although this might be an issue with Windows.

In gaming on the highest settings on just battery power, battery life is as bad as you’d expect since gaming is very power-hungry — about 1.5 or 2 hours. For productivity with the system set to quiet mode, it’s about 6 hours. The battery lasted me from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. before I needed to recharge. That’s about what I look for in a gaming laptop.

Should you buy the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro?

You should buy the Legion 5 Pro if:

  • You want a gaming laptop with a more standard design
  • You want a 16-inch gaming laptop that’ll play any game in your library
  • You want a laptop with a high refresh rate screen

You shouldn't buy the Legion 5 Pro if:

  • You're a content creator who needs the most accurate display
  • You'll spend a lot of time using the webcam
  • You're on a budget

Yes, this Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is a seriously powerful gaming laptop. It has a great Ryzen CPU and a good GPU for playing any game you’d want. I fell in love with this machine during my month-long review period. It packs a lot of power and is perfect for everything I needed it for, whether I want to game or get some work done. Just the poor webcam held it back from being perfect.